The group blog of twelve quiltmakers and textile artists scattered around the world in 8 countries and across four continents. Our aim is to create a small quilt every three months.
The theme is chosen by the members in turn.
Our website: www.12bythedozen.weebly.com

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Tuesday, 5 December 2017

Thank you for the honour, Venetta, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I've chosen a Danish artist. Vilhelm Lundstrøm (1893, Copenhagen – 1950) was one of Denmark's most successful modernist painters. It was he who introduced French cubism to Denmark. He was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Art where he studied under Rostrup Böyesen. Lundstrøm spent an extended period in France in the 1920s ...

Saturday, 2 December 2017

Venetta please can you choose a name from: Linda B,
Jinnie, Uta, Rosemary, Mai-Britt, Dianne and Claire? Then let us know so they can announce their chosen artist. Crazy what with all the things to do in the run up to Christmas, but I am dying to know what the next challenge is.

Thursday, 30 November 2017

Escher

I like Escher's work, but I was dreading this challenge. In the end I decided to try making my own tesselation, just to see how it worked. I started with a hexagon and tried some really simple designs, getting a little more complex each time. I enjoyed playing with the tesselations and in the end had eight or nine designs, the simplest being too simple and the more complex ones not being very interesting. This was the only one that I felt I could do anything with. I thought it would be quick and simple to make too. I first quilted the motifs from the back, as it was much easier to see the markings on the white backing fabric. Then I painted them with iridescent fabric paint (it is difficult to see the iridescence on the photo and I haven't been able to capture the colours accurately). I had more trouble making it than I thought, as I made a mess of transferring the design and had to start all over again. It took me four times as long to paint it than I thought it would, by which time I was thoroughly bored with it, and in hindsight I think it would have prefered to have printed it. Originally I was going to paint all the shapes, but realized it would be better to leave a black border for more contrast, but by then I had painted the bronze shapes in the middle row up to the edge. I made a mistake in the final cutting and the design is not centred, which annoys me: they say to measure twice, cut once, but I am geometrically challenged and despite my rule of measure at least five times and cut once, I still managed to make a dog's dinner of it!

I like Escher pictures, but 'transforming one of them into a quilt' is not my thing. So I decided to use his name, and the letters it is comprised of, as the inspiration for this challenge.
At first I chose a piece of hand-dyed linen that had been waiting for its turn, and had been a bit sad because of the brightness of its color contrast, red and yellow.
Then I marked squares and filled these with 'handwritten' versions of the ongiong name, in various orientations.

you need a good stabilizer to be able to put that kind of stitching onto the fabric...

These filled squares were then overlaid with large versions of the individual letters of the name ESCHER. Of course, the 'e' appears twice in the name, but that must not necessarily result in a doubling of appearance on the piece. Along the way certain readjustments had to be made, because I mis-stitched, or made an unconscious decision that something about the plan had to be changed, who knows. In any case, the original plan looked slightly different, but only a little bit, really.

First an outline, that can then be filled.

Here you can see the almost finished piece as I am still debating its final orientation.

And this is the final orientation it has arrived at.

text messages 15: escher

In conclusion, it was more fun than doing the Klimt challenge, and I have given myself the liberty to interpret the challenge theme generously. I hope that meets with approval, but I suppose it is open to the members how they decide to take up the challenge, and how to use it as inspiration.

I love Escher, but found this challenge totally overwhelming. Luckily I love a challenge, so thank you Venetta. There was also lots of sides to him I was totally unaware of, so researching has been most fun.

It took me a long time finding inspiration, and I would look daily at his art, being at a loss of what to do.

Then only last week I came across my source material (plenty of time then) in the form of what I think is an installation, from an Escher exhibition in Madrid. I am not sure he made it, it looks too modern, but it is clearly inspired by him. So my quilt will be inspired by, inspired by!

It was a joy to make, using the ‘flip and stitch’ method.

Zoom!

From the Madrid Escher exhibition

In my studio yesterday busy with Zoom!

Bring on the next challenge! Note to self: Do not procrastinate so much ;0)

I had an idea, someone had done it, I had another idea, someone had done that, I had another idea .... etc.

So I did a bit more research based on Escher's work on planes, until I came up with a simple intersection that still has movement in it. Actually it had more movement than I intended, the red lines formed perfect curves before I quilted this piece and obviously distorted the base fabric.

Inspiration for this piece came from:

Sphere Surface with Fishes by M.C. Escher 1958

But the design was extracted from:

Sphere Circles

Whilst sourcing this image as a url I came across - www.wikiart.org which opens with a "today in history" random collection of artworks. it's good job I've chosen my artist - this site looks like a bottomless pit of art exploration!

Well, Venetta, I think you scared a lot of us with your choice of Escher. But that is what this group is all about - challenging ourselves. Like most of us I have admired his work and draughtsmanship for ages. I love the ones which metamorph across the page but eventually went for one of his tessellations.

The piece is raw edge applique on a whole cloth black background - commercial and hand dyed cottons. It was a challenge to chose which bit to focus on and then how to execute interlocking the shapes. But I thoroughly enjoyed the process and had fun.

My immediate inspiration was Escher's 1922 woodcut self-portait and I could not even contemplate any of his other work.

I was so struck by how contemporary this portrait is, even though it was created nearly a century ago. I based my portrait on a photo of my son-in-law Matt. It was hard to find a photo of him NOT smiling. The stitched background is formed from tesselated houses, as a nod to their new house.

As much as I have been fascinated & intrigued by the art of tessellation it has never inspired me to produce a piece hence the simplicity of my piece and the heading 'My take".

Added to the fact that as good as all my pieces in this challenge have been whole cloth / surface design in nature I have gone with the flow.My inspiration originally started with the tale end of a scarf I have ......

and then I applied it to a tree 'disintegrating' into birds in flight. I made a decision to also work in colour. The two background fabrics are a piece Hilary & I dyed when we were working on the colour range and the right hand piece Diane you may recognise. the top was stencilled & painted. Quilting it was a challenge but I eventually settled on the straight lines which I think work.

Personally a little disappointed in the end piece but I can live with it.

I have been an admirer of Escher's work, especially his mathematical works that create an illusion. Escher was inspired by L.S. and Roger Penrose, the creators of the Penrose triangle (an impossible triangle known as a tribar). He used this concept to create a print of people on a staircase that has the optical illusion of always ascending or descending.

It was my goal to put the Penrose triangle on a quilted background that is mathematically divided by circles and lines. As you can see by my drawing, my plan was to interlock the Penrose triangles across the quilt.

I printed the triangles on Transfer Artist Paper (TAP) and then colored them with Tsukineko inks. The transfer of the triangles did not work and I suspect it was because my TAP was more than a year old.

However, not to be defeated, I managed to get a few to print onto Chiffon and then I machine appliqued them onto to back of my quilt...which then became the front of my quilt.

Although my resulting piece was not what I originally had planned, I enjoyed learning more about Escher's life and his art.

I was delightfully surprised that there was an Escher exhibition in Seoul, South Korea at the same time that we were visiting our son (who is stationed there with the Army) and our daughter in law. The exhibition was very popular and very crowded.

Escher was undoubetedly a great mathematician and together with his artistic talent he combined the two to great effect. I found this challenge daunting to say the least (his tessellations are extraordinarily brilliant) but I was not inspired with the fact that his work was monochromatic in most of his work. My passion is colour, and in Africa this is what we have and see in every facet of our lives, even in winter when it can get really cold up here on the highveld, the sun shines from clear, beautiful skies and our indiginious trees in the garden are always green. In retrospect I could have used colour, but in the end used different shades of blue. Not my favourite piece but hope I rose to the challenge. I used African fabric called Schwe Schwe in the corners and in the binding to represent the scales of a fish, which, I think, worked well. I also include two pieces of his which were my inspiration.

M.C.Escher
When I was initially confronted by the prospect of interpreting Escher's work I felt totally overwhelmed . His work has never really appealed to me and because I love bright colours it became a daunting task . However ,on analysis , I discovered how brilliant a mathematician he was and because of this was logical in his approach. I regard him as a mathematician rather than an artist . Possibly he found that through art he was able to try out mathematical conundrums !
There was no way that I wanted to work in greys, black and white and decided that a monochromatic palette would best suit what I wanted to portray of his work . He became a master of repetition (through which he searched for infinity )and tessellation so I did 2 pieces in the end . One in which I used precision and repetition and the other an experiment with tessellation. Here they are.
The head in the first piece was part of a woodcut but coincidentally looks a bit like Escher's profile so seemed very appropriate . I am sure you can all work out how my tessellation worked . Rosemary